Ink-jet printers are in widespread use today for printing functions in personal computer, facsimile and other applications. Such printers typically include replaceable or semi-permanent print cartridges which hold a supply of ink and carry the ink-jet printhead. The cartridge typically is secured into a printer carriage which supports one or a plurality of cartridges above the print medium, and traverses the medium in a direction transverse to the direction of medium travel through the printer. Electrical connections are made to the printhead by flexible wiring circuits attached to the outside of the cartridge. Each printhead includes a number of tiny nozzles defined in a substrate and nozzle plate structure which are selectively fired by electrical signals applied to interconnect pads to eject droplets of ink in a controlled fashion onto the print medium.
In order to achieve accurate printing quality, each removable cartridge includes datum surfaces which engage against corresponding carriage surfaces to precisely locate the cartridge when inserted into the carriage. In this manner, when a cartridge ink supply is exhausted, the cartridge may be replaced with a fresh cartridge, and the printhead of the new cartridge will be precisely located relative to the carriage.
Different cartridge bodies have typically been employed for multi-color and monochrome inkjet cartridges, incurring expenses in the design and tooling for the different bodies. Multicolor cartridges are a common, physically compact inkjet solution, but unless the user prints equal quantities of all colors, ink is discarded when the disposable cartridge empties any one color.
Another approach to best match the customer consumption of individual colors is to provide individual completely independent single color cartridges or individual inkjet reservoirs.
These solutions are generally physically large and require the development, tooling, stocking, etc. of multiple components. This leads to different production processes, even entirely different assembly lines, to manufacture these different cartridges.
It would therefore represent an advance in the art to provide a technique for using a common cartridge body in multiple applications.